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Last-Modified: 1997/11/26
Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression, Supplement B
Persecution of the Jews in Poland
Excerpts from Testimony of Hans Frank, taken in
Nurnberg, Germany, 7 September 1945, 1030-1215, by
Lt. Col. Thomas S. Hinkel, IGD. Also present:
Siegfried Ramler, Interpreter; T/4 R.R. Kerry,
Reporter.
Q. Do you remember the removal from Warsaw of a large number
of Jews in 1942?
A. When should that have been?
Q. During the period 22 July to 3 October 1942.
A. This might have been reported to me later on. Was this
during the time of the ghetto rising?
Q. You know whether or not it was reported to you that a
large number of Jews had been removed from Warsaw during a
period in 1942?
[Page 1375]
A. I have understood the question. State Secretary Buehler
would know it. I know that a conference had taken place
between the City and the State Secretary, but I had not
taken part in this conference.
Q. Well, wasn't the result of the conference reported to
you?
A. No. The competent authority was in Warsaw.
Q. Is it your statement that as Governor-General of Poland,
you didn't know that a large part of the population of
Warsaw had been removed therefrom?
A. Certainly I got to know it. That's quite clear.
Q. That is my question to you. Wasn't it reported?
A. It certainly was not told me by State Secretary Buehler,
to whom the report was directed. If a report had been
issued, perhaps it was by Governor Fischer, who was
personally in Cracow.
Q. I am not trying to quibble with you on words. When I say
report, I don't mean necessarily that a formal written
document was presented to you concerning these matters. What
I mean generally is, were you not informed by one means or
another whether orally or in writing of these events?
A. The question about the transportation of Jews has
certainly been reported to me not only from Warsaw but other
sources.
Q. What other sources?
A. Out of the whole Reich.
Q. Didn't Buehler tell you who told him about these things?
A. Not only Buehler spoke about it, but also Secretary
Boepple spoke about it, and besides that, this was a general
plan where always the names were mentioned because this was
a problem that affected the administration all over Germany;
but what we did know was that Himmler was the Reich
Commissioner for Jews. Only once a written document came
into my hands from Lammers in which was written that all
affairs in the Reich and all occupied territories of the
Reich are under the jurisdiction of the Reich SS Commissar
Himmler. This document has been repeated in various forms.
Once it came to a connection where the police alone could
dispose of the property of the Jews: that all the property
that belonged to Jews who were being evacuated came under
the charge of Reich Commissar Himmler and not in the charge
of State authorities, and this also applied to the General
Government.
Q. I still say that as Governor-General of Poland, when
reports were made to you by your subordinates regarding
instructions that they had received from Berlin while they
were in Berlin, that they must have told you from whom these
instructions were
[Page 1376]
received and who these people were that gave the
instructions that you refer to.
A. I think the best man who would know about this is SS
Gruppenfuehrer Krueger.
Q. That may be, but I am asking what you know about it.
A. I know what has been reported to me.
Q. And what was reported to you?
A. That the Jews on the order of the Fuehrer should be
transported towards the east in stages, that this plan was
not discussed very often because we often administered those
things ourselves and there was also a different town,
Theresienstadt, which was also taken into consideration, but
that had not been notified to us in writing.
Q. Now, you said that your subordinates, including Buehler,
on occasion told you about instructions which had been
received concerning the treatment to be accorded the Jews or
other matters in connection with the Jews, and I want to
know from whom your subordinates received these
instructions.
A. First the word "instruction" is far too grand a word. It
was not really an instruction. It was just the result of
conversations and rumors. Himmler had never expressed his
plans so clearly, and what I have said and done then was
just the result of beliefs which were quite clear to me.
Q. The question is this: Did you or did you not take action
in response to the message that you received from one of
your subordinates as to what the people in Berlin wanted you
to do with the Jews?
A. In no case have I had anything to do with the
transportation of Jews from Warsaw, which was a clear
internal affair of the SS.
Q. What connection did you have with the Jews?
A. I had no competent authority on this particular field. I
had a few Jews in the castle with me as workers, but I
personally had nothing to do with the Jews.
Q. You stated that after you talked with Buehler that you
took action with reference to the suggestion that Buehler
told you about as coming from Berlin. What were these
actions to which you refer?
A. I have not said that I took action.
Q. What did you do?
A. I don't know what you mean by action, but I often talked
to Dr. Fischer, and it is a fact that the transportation of
Jews from Poland to different places was very bad for the
economy. We have gotten in touch with the Chief of the Ss,
with the Ober-
[Page 1377]
kommando of the Wehrmacht Keitel, and the Reich Minister to
prevent Jews who worked so well producing uniforms from
being transported away from Warsaw. My point of view was
that it was crazy to do such a thing in the middle of the
war when one must have every button of every uniform. We had
armament officials that came to us and begged us to leave
the Jews because their factories would have to stop.
Q. What did you tell Hitler about the Jews?
A. I told him in 1940 that the special thing about the Jews
in Poland was that they were a different class of people
from what we had in Germany. In Germany the Jews are the
rich ones. In Germany they are not manual workers; they are
not people who stand in factories and work. In Germany they
have been bankers, doctors, merchants. In Poland, on the
other hand, the Jews are the small manual workers. They are
the bootmakers, the tailors, and not only that, they are
also semi-skilled workers in industry.
Q. What else was said?
A. And then I also told him that they are really quite well
off, that they are very industrious and behave well, and
that we cannot dispense with them in Poland because the Pole
has not the nature that the German Jew has. The Jew in
Poland was the man that brought the trade into the village
because the transportation of the country was so very bad.
There were no railways, and that was terribly important.
Q. What did Hitler say to all this?
A. That interested him but he did not talk about it further.
Q. Did you tell him about how the Jews were being treated?
A. That I could not tell him because nothing special had
happened to the Jews.
Q. What happened after that?
A. The Colonel must remember that I came with very few men
into a completely alien country. From the 7th of November it
took me a quarter of a year until I occupied all my service
posts, until all these posts were able to communicate with
the central post or orders from the central post could be
given to the different administrative sections. Besides, I
had in the country the Wehrmacht commander, who had nothing
to do with me, who was not under me at all, and who was not
responsible to me for any reports, and they had already been
in the country since the 1st of September. The SS and police
had already been in the country, as I said before. It is my
personal opinion, although Adolf Hitler never told me in the
course of all this time, that Himmler in-
[Page 1378]
fluenced Hitler to make a very great anti-Jewish campaign,
using the reason that the Jews were guilty of the war
against Germany. This of course contributed in ever-
increasing measure to the more difficult problem of the
Jews. The SS never allowed any of my workers to get involved
in their Jewish campaigns. At first they started to gather
together the Jews, saying that anyway the Jews had their own
parts of the town in every town they lived, and it was then
we tried through the formation of ghettos to keep things in
order at least in the bigger cities. In these ghettos all
Jews were to be rounded up together; they were to be under
the protection of the police; they were to have their own
administration there. I want to point out that the order we
talked about yesterday about the forced labor of Jews, that
those orders had actually never gone into effect, that the
SS acted under their own orders and declared that the
General-Governor had nothing to order.
Q. What happened to the Jews?
A. We already talked about the fact that these ghettos came
into their greatest difficulties, especially Warsaw, where
food was concerned. And then in accordance with the general
plan, the general transportation of Jews towards the east
was carried out.
Q. What was your participation in that?
A. That I fought against that until the very last moment, as
I said before.
Q. Then what did you do at the last moment?
A. I went to the highest authorities of the different
departments in order to interest them in my opinion, but I
got the decision of the Fuehrer from the Oberkommando of the
Wehrmacht Keitel, who told me himself that the Fuehrer
wanted the transportation of the Jews to the East carried
out under any circumstances.
Q. After your opinion was overruled, what did you do?
A. I have already told the Colonel before that eight times I
offered my resignation.
Q. How many Jews were killed or liquidated during that 1943
period?
A. In the rising?
Q. Yes.
A. The number has never been told to me. I once asked
Himmler to show me the photos of the ghetto but that was not
shown to me. Nobody could enter this territory. It was shut
tightly. It had been declared a military wartime
restriction, and the civilian administration was kept
outside completely. I just had a very superficial report
with no exact information, and whenever I
[Page 1379]
had a question, I just received the answer that the question
hadn't been cleared up. It was always very difficult to ask
questions because the police and the Wehrmacht said, "Mr.
Governor-General what have you to do with that question? You
should sit in the castle and be a representative."
Q. Did you hear that more than 50,000 Jews had been killed
or captured or liquidated one way or the other?
A. This number I am hearing for the first time. I have not
heard any numbers but I heard it was in the thousands. I was
also told that the losses of the German police and Wehrmacht
had been very substantial.
Q. What action, if any, did you take in connection with the
destruction of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943?
A. I asked for reports from the Wehrmacht and the police,
and it was reported to me that there was really a big rising
with weapons, with cannons, machine guns of all kinds, that
it was an internal civil war.

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